Superior woman chronicles roller coaster year in India in new book

Sandra Bornstein, left, takes a ride on an elephant with an unidentified teaching colleague in Munnar, India, in October of 2010.
(Courtesy Sandra Bornstein)

SUPERIOR -- Sandra Bornstein could have remained in the comfort of her Superior home, ensconced in the trappings of suburban tranquility and the predictable life it affords.

But the 56-year-old educator felt a tug away from the place she has called home for a dozen years when her husband, a lawyer, was offered work overseas at the end of 2009. It would mean months, perhaps years, living in India.

Bornstein, at the time an adjunct professor at Front Range Community College, said she struggled mightily with the decision but in the end decided to board the airplane. Her hope was to secure a teaching job in India and use some of the skills she had gained through her own education -- including a master's degree in elementary education at the University of Colorado -- to help others.

"There was a part of me that wanted this adventure," she said. "I'm not in my 20s, I'm not in my 30s, I'm in my 50s, but still there was an intense desire to capitalize on my skills. I was a stay-at-home mom with four kids. I had always put my career aspirations on hold."

But Bornstein couldn't have known at the time just what kinds of up and downs 2010 would hold for her and her family. A life-threatening injury to her husband on the Colorado ski slopes during a visit home, the glorious wedding of her son to an Indian woman, and health challenges of her own that finally brought her experience in India to an end.

Bornstein has documented her overseas adventure in a book "May This Be the Best Year of Your Life," which went on sale earlier this month. It can be purchased through sandrabornstein.com.

"Part of what my story is if you're given the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone, if it's possible, go for it," she said. "If you stay in the security of your home environment, you never get to see what the world is all about."

And what Bornstein saw in Bangalore, where she taught 5th grade English and social studies at a prominent international school, was startlingly different from what she had come to know in Superior.

She recalls mad thoroughfares of rushing traffic, shirtless children on the streets, animals everywhere and a particularly bothersome monkey that would enter the classroom and look for food and steal markers.

"Until I really got there and saw it for myself, nothing I saw on a TV show or in a movie could make me understand," she said. "It was hard for me to brush it off."

Bornstein lived in a 300-square-foot room on campus and ate "dorm food." Her husband, recuperating from an accident on the ski slopes that put him in a coma early in the year, was 7,700 miles away in Colorado.

Bornstein stuck with her commitment to teach at the school but found herself getting increasingly sick as time wore on. She lost 20 pounds. Her illness culminated on a bus ride near Delhi as she got ready to watch her son, who had lived in the country for year, get married.

A pain in the pelvis became excruciating and violent vomiting followed.

"This is not good," Bornstein recalled telling herself.

Before she knew it, she had undergone an emergency kidney stone operation. It wasn't long before she was on a plane bound for home.

Coming home from India was as hard a decision as the one Bornstein had to make to get there.

"I had 18 students that I was responsible for. How could I go home in December and not come home in January?" she said. "I decided my health and my family were more important than my career."

But Bornstein said her year in India wasn't just invaluable as an experience in and of itself but also as a "green light" to go on other adventures in the future. They may not be as long and ambitious as her year in Bangalore, but they won't wither away because of fear of the unknown.

"It's about our ability to accept challenges, uncertainty, a whole other culture -- it added a layer of depth to me as a person," Bornstein said. "It was a call to action. We all have our unique talents but the question is, are we using them?"